


Adjustments

by alessandralee



Category: Primeval
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-15
Updated: 2015-04-15
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:33:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3752929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being cleared for life in the 21st century, Emily moves in with Jess for a while and begins to adjust.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adjustments

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalisgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalisgirl/gifts).



As far as temporary roommates go, Jess is probably the best The ARC has to offer, but that doesn’t change the fact that her flat can be something of a sensory overload to Emily. She spends most of a day trying to puzzle out why Jess needs four telephones in her kitchen before the other woman holds up a sleek black cordless phone and tells her the other ones are just there for ornamental purposes.

It almost makes her miss the sparseness of Matt’s place.

But Jess keeps a refrigerator stocked with plenty of foods Emily recognizes (along with some that she doesn’t). She teaches Emily to use the electric stovetop, which works more quickly and cooks more evenly than anything Emily had access to in her three years traveling through time. And most nights, the two of them can be found seated on the sofa, working through all London has to offer when it comes to takeout.

As it turns out, Emily is particularly fond of Indian and Thai food, but not at all a fan of Mexican.

So all in all, Emily thinks she’s in the best situation she could probably be in if she’s going to catch up on the last 144 years (a daunting task which Emily is determined to rise to). Yes, she’d like to move out and have her own flat sometime soon, a place she make feel like home. While Jess’s furniture is certainly nice, it’s so sleek and bright and strange that it makes Emily feel homesick at times.

She wants and oasis, a balance between where she came from and where she is now. And thanks to her new and slowly (painfully slowly) growing bank account, the woman who never had to be concerned with financial matters will have a home to call her own, someday in the not too distant future. A place that doesn’t belong to a father, or a husband, or anyone but her.

So for now, Emily just has to worry about acclimating as best as she can.

\--

She’s been sleeping on the bed that pulls out of Jess’s sofa for just over four weeks when the pillows appear. They’re both small and one reads _keep calm and carry_ on in bold red letters while the other says _home sweet home_ in a flowery script.

They resemble needlepoint, or at least Emily thinks they’re supposed to, but she can’t make out any of the individual stitches. It looks more like the words have been painted directly onto the canvas. She concludes they must have been machine made, like pretty much everything else in this century.

The next week, she spots a thin purple box on Jess’s computer table. _Children’s Needlepoint Kit_ it reads, above an illustration of two purple sheep in a grassy meadow.

Emily knows it probably qualifies as snooping, but she can’t resist opening the box. Out spills a plastic grid, large pink needle, and small bundles of yarn in green, white, blue, black and lavender. About a quarter of the grid has been filled in with yarn, the beginning of the same pastoral scene printed on the box.

Despite the simplicity of the design and the oversized grid, the work is pretty sloppy. Emily could have done better as a young child, but her mother has insisted she spend hours practicing, and Emily doesn’t think Jess has hours to spare on these kinds of things. Jess is a lover of computers, not crafts, though, so Emily knows the only reason she’d do something like this is to build more common ground with Emily. She’s touched.

Quickly, because Jess is due home any minute from the Italian restaurant a few blocks away, Emily packs the kit away. It’s probably tidier than it was the last time Jess packed it up, but Emily doubts she’ll notice.

And two days later, when Jess comes to her with a half-completed project that is more knots that anything else, Emily helps her friends to unravel it and start over. Jess is much more patient about that than Emily had been when she started learning, and soon enough she’s graduated from yarn and plastic to thread and canvas. Every member of the team ends up with their own needlepoint pillow or wall-hanging.

\--

Jess is something of an ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’ kind of woman, so when Jess comes home from the grocery store with the ice cream Jess requested, she’s a bit surprised to find the living room in disarray. The duvet from Jess’s bed is spread out across the sofa and a large bowl of steaming popcorn is lying on the coffee table.

“What’s the occasion,” Emily asks, when Jess emerges from the kitchen with two large glasses of wine.

“I think it’s time you discovered Netflix,” is Jess’s response.

Netflix isn’t entirely foreign to Emily. She’s listened to Connor and Jess go back and forth about their favorite TV programs plenty of times, so she’s caught on to quite a bit.

“What exactly did you have in mind?” she asks as her roommate plays with two different remotes to bring up the red Netflix logo.

“I thought I’d let you decide,” Jess pushes the blanket to the side and takes a seat on the cough, gesturing for Emily to join her. “We have thousands of titles to choose from,” the thought of that is overwhelming to Emily until Jess adds, “but I have suggestions based on whatever you’re in the mood for.”

That feels less intimidating. Certainly Jess will have good ideas. 

“Where do we start?” Emily asks, joining Jess on the sofa and reaching for a glass of wine.

“Do you want an historical documentary?” Jess asks first. Emily shakes her head no. She’s already up to her eyeballs in information thanks to the history books Becker’s been lending her. “Fiction it is, then. Do you want something modern? Or we could do historical, maybe something you’re familiar with. Wuthering Heights? Frankenstein? Something Jane Austen?”

Emily has read all of those, but it’s been a long week at The ARC; she’d like something on the lighter side of things.

“Jane Austen,” she suggests.

Jess’s eyes light up like she’d been hoping for that response. She takes a deep breath and says, “Alright, we have the most recent version of Emma, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. Then there are two different adaptations of Persuasion, the Pride and Prejudice mini-series with Colin Firth, although that’s a bit long for one night, the movie with Keira Knightley, and the Bollywood version.”

Emily gapes at Jess for a minute. She certainly hadn’t been expecting that many options, she’s not even sure she can recall everything Jess just mentioned, so she opts for the most recent on she can remember.

“Pride and Prejudice, the movie.” She’ll puzzle out exactly what Bollywood means some other time.

Jess smiles and starts typing the title into the TV, “Good choice. I love the atmosphere in this one, it’s so dreamy.”

Relieved by Jess’s approval and excited to see the familiar story play out before her, Emily sinks back into the sofa, fairly certain that Netflix is a 21st century offering she can get used to.


End file.
